The Truth About Walmart's Super-Secret Data Center

Reader humphrmi thinks he knows what’s up with Walmart’s giant unmarked datacenter, photos of which we posted recently. It’s a truth SO REVEALING that it may make you go, “Oh, that makes sense.”

“Having worked at a company that built themselves more datacenter space in the last four years, I can say this is all very innocent, and actually, pretty boring.

A facility like that, if it just went online this year, was probably in planning about five years ago. Back then, the “big thing” in datacenters was, rather than continually adding new DC [data center] space at existing company locations, companies were going to huge, remote DCs in areas where land was cheap and dark fiber was plentiful. Instead of adding on to five DCs over the next five to ten years, companies were building huge “super DCs” that could accommodate all their growth for the next decade or so. It was simply a money thing.

At the same time, this was just slightly after 9/11, and companies were worried about the “next” terror attack. Nobody wanted their company mentioned in the news in the same paragraph with “suicide bomber”, so they were building their new remote super datacenters with no markings. Even the property is probably owned by a shell company, maybe related to the tenant, maybe not. The whole point is to keep ne’er-do-wells with an agenda from putting their datacenter and its employees into the news.

I worked for a company that did this. No super secret conspiracy, just a desire for scale & privacy at a low price.”